‘We have to continue to be really, really vigilant’ in maintaining our health infrastructure: Dr. Amesh Adalja

U.S. coronavirus cases surpassed 6.67 million with over 197 thousand deaths with Texas seeing a massive surge as a new study says three quarters of Americans worry the approval process for a vaccine will be too hasty. Dr. Amesh A. Adalja, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, joins The Final Round to discuss the latest developments in coronavirus and the vaccine race.

Video transcript

SEANA SMITH: Welcome back to The Final Round here on Yahoo Finance. Well, President Trump holding a press conference last hour, saying that the US is going to manufacture enough vaccine doses for every American by April. And of course, this comes as Americans are still a little bit apprehensive when it comes to a vaccine. There's a new study out by Pew Research saying that more than 3/4 of Americans are concerned about the vaccine approval process.

So for more on this, we want to bring in Dr. Amesh Adalja. He's a Senior Scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. And Dr. Adalja, it's great to have you back on the program. Let's start with President Trump's comments earlier today that we will get a vaccine for every American by April. What do you think of that time line?

AMESH A. ADALJA: It's an ambitious timeline. I think that we can, throughout 2021, get the population vaccinated, but I don't like to pick a specific month or make something kind of very early in 2021 I think that we're going to actually meet, that we have to be prepared for there to be slowdowns as we start manufacturing at scale, as we get phase III clinical data. So I think by the end of 2021, yes, most Americans likely will have access to that vaccine. But I do worry about there being hiccups in the rollout process, because this is a two-dose vaccine, and it's going to be a very daunting project.

SEANA SMITH: Yeah, and speaking of that, potential hiccups, but then, also, just gaining the public's trust, because I think that's been a huge issue that has gotten a little bit more focus over the last several weeks. And we spoke to Moderna's CEO on the program yesterday and what his company is doing, releasing more information about the vaccine and the trials, trying to be a little bit more transparent. But what do you think the vaccine developers should disclose? Do you think we should get even more details? I guess, how do we win the public's trust, because that is so important, just in terms of beating this virus and getting it under control in the future?

AMESH A. ADALJA: We have to be as transparent as possible, the whole process for the clinical trials, what the exclusion and inclusion criteria were, what the side effect profile was, how representative the trial populations are of the general public. And then we have to go through the approval process and make sure that there's no even hint of politicization, that this is the normal emergency use authorization process, which isn't being meddled with the way hydroxychloroquine and convalescent plasma decisions were. And it's going to be something that we want to get as much of the population vaccinated as possible.

We have to remember, just back in 2009 during that pandemic, only 23% of people in the United States got the pandemic vaccine, and that was a tried-and-true flu vaccine. So this is going to be something that's going to be very challenging. And a vaccine that doesn't get into the arms of Americans is going to be useless. So we need to really work on this, because we know the anti-vaccine movement is already agitating against this vaccine.

INES FERRE: Doctor, Ines here. And when we do get a vaccine, how does a roll up-- a rollout normally happen for a vaccine? By this, I mean, how is it decided who's getting the vaccine first? Does it go by age groups? Does it go by regions?

AMESH A. ADALJA: So what will happen is there'll be a prioritization process, and that's already underway by a group called the ACIP, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which is working on thinking about priority groups in conjunction with the National Academy of Medicine. So there will be people, health care workers, high-risk individuals, that'll probably form the first tier of people to get the vaccine. And it will be some time before the general public, those without risk factors for severe disease, are able to get the vaccine. That's-- that's what we should expect. We want to use this vaccine in the most impactful way, but we want those decisions to be very transparent and people to understand what the calculation was for setting certain priority groups.

MYLES UDLAND: And Dr. Adalja, I want to come back to the state of the outbreak right now in the US as we head towards the fall. I know that early in this pandemic, there was a lot of popular concern about a second wave, how tough this winter is going to be. Based on what you've learned about the virus, how the outbreak has continued, where's your head at as you look at a population where we've seen millions of cases so far, we're heading into flu season, how concerned are you about the state of the virus presently in the US?

AMESH A. ADALJA: We've never achieved, really, any kind of control to say that we've had a trough before a new wave, so we're still in that first wave, still tens of thousands of cases occurring every day. And we have to prepare for acceleration that might occur when it gets colder, when it gets less humid, when-- when it is less sunny, when people cannot do as many activities outdoors and have to be indoor where we know transmission is increasing.

At the same time, the general population is getting back to some semblance of normalcy. We've got universities. We've got sports. We've got schools coming into session again. All of that is going to add to the intensity, so we have to continue to be really, really vigilant in making sure that we have the public health infrastructure to deal with these cases. That means having testing, tracing, and isolating ability in every part of this country and fortifying our public health agencies to be able to do it.

SEANA SMITH: Dr. Adalja, on that note speaking of testing, today we had the CDC reversing its testing guidance. They previously said that people without symptoms but were potentially exposed to an infected person that they did not necessarily need a test. And now they're saying that you should get that test. What are your thoughts just on this reversal? And how do you think it complicated our efforts just to try and contain this virus while we are still in the first wave?

AMESH A. ADALJA: This reversal really is just another example of the CDC guide of being put in the back seat, being relegated to some subordinate role where their fealty is not to reality science and medicine, but to the president and to the White House narrative on testing and the rest of the pandemic. So I do think that the CDC's credibility has been badly damaged, but it's not their fault. They've been put into a position that's impossible.

And I do think that when the initial guidance came out, there was an outcry against it, and many state health departments were not going to follow it. And that's-- that's really makes a lot of sense, because the CDC didn't actually write that guidance. That was written from Washington and HHS officials, not CDC professionals. And I think that this is what we have to fix. We cannot have the CDC continually being undermined, having to change its guidance because the guidance was false and-- and was put into place because of a political reason and not a scientific reason.